Tip no. 7: It is similarly unfair to ask a woman to leave aside her personal
experience and discuss feminist issues in the abstract. You are
discussing the stuff of her life. Asking her to "not make it personal" is to ask her to wrench her womanhood from her personhood.
2. This week's crazy story from Wired. The ending was a little abrupt, but I was totally sucked in.
Exploding the Phone: The Untold Story of the Teenagers and Outlaws Who Hacked Ma Bell
3. Wow. Check it out. Shocker! Disbelief! Craziness! Condoms in schools=less teen pregnancy?!
4. (Yes. I am totally about to Fave Five myself.) This wonderful felted sweater I finally had time to finish this week. It's up here because it's a favorite sweater that needed some life breathed (needled?) back into it.
5. Last but definitely not least. Rafter's "Veggie Coming Out" or really just "The Everyday Life of Being Intentional About Your Food Choices, and Why People Hate You for It" or also "The Facebook Transcript of a Feisty Debate on Carnivore Club and..." well, just read on:
[On the Carnivore Club]
Rafter: You know what, everyone? I AM mad. The CC community seems to have fully embraced all things gluten-free, but the options available and the reception to veganism have stagnated and maybe even dwindled on campus. I strongly suspect that it's because gluten intolerance is not an ethical choice - like we can pity them because they can't help it, and they can still keep a manly, Murica-approved diet, but it's your own fault for choosing the "faggy hippie vegan lifestyle" (excuse my bad language - paraphrasing what I've heard). Maybe it's the stigma against opening my mouth. Celiacs can complain all they want, but even mention the v-word, and you've offended everyone and their grandma. Maybe I'm tired of being able to eat only one choice on a menu. Maybe I'm just tired of being a "good" vegetarian who never talks about it except to meekly order special food, and the mere existence of the Carnivore Club with their bacon-themed events has finally triggered me.
CarnClub advocate: As a member of the club, I can tell you Kate, that purpose of the club is about getting people together and having a good time. The name "carnivore" is meant to be cute and funny (as no one is truly a carnivore). The club started as a counter culture when the school opened a restaurant that didn't serve any meat. So really, it was a reaction to an anti-meat movement on campus. A group of students set up a grill outside Herb N Farm and gave out free burgers. When I started in the club in 2005, we always served vegetarian options and one of our board members was vegetarian. (Actually the entire time i was there, we always had a vegetarian in the club which is pretty good considering that there were only 5-8 active members).
The budget is not as large as students talk about. The club has two accounts: one from the school and one with money that they raise themselves. The school budget covers only some of the costs and the club has consistently been the most active organization on campus because they cater at so many events. If you notice them grilling outside, it is usually for non-carnivore events. (You'll notice that an another student group has asked them to come BBQ). On average, we did 2-3 events a week, just to support other groups on campus. These events were as small as BSU BBQs and as big as Llama.
For official carnivore club events, there are usually only one event a month and examples are events like Oktoberfest, The Pig Roast and Blues & Shoes. Again, if you go to these events, you'll notice it's about having a good time, dancing and enjoying great music with friends.
This club works really hard and they give a lot back to the students. They represent a culture that is proud to be meat eaters and they feed vegetarians. The school has changed a lot since I started in 05. At that time, there were many hippies on campus. Maybe now our small counter culture has grown to be the majority of students. I don't know because I'm not on campus.
In opinion though, the club was for me an opportunity to not take my beliefs so personally and let go a bit. I found that it was a place for me, a Nevada Girl who loves to BBQ and event planning, to have a good time and not feel like I had to conform to CC's yuppie culture. I love veggies too and I respect whatever people want to eat. If you want to be accepted as a vegetarian maybe accepting the carnivores is a good place to start. Tolerance breeds tolerance.
Rafter: The Carnivore Club DOES receive a huge amount from CCSGA: $10,500 this year, which is a full 9% of the CCSGA student group budget and more than any other student group receives.
(http://sites.coloradocollege.edu/ccsga/finance/historical-student-group-budgets/) This does not include additional funding they receive from Special Events. This seems like an awful lot going toward "fun hangouts" as opposed to organizations that provide support and services to students such as SOSS, QCC, and Femco.
Carnivore Club is has a very large presence on campus, larger than any vegetarian themed group, and this completely reflects on the climate of acceptance on campus. Even though vegetarianism enjoys a nice presence in this community in comparison to the national context, in no way does it constitute a majority. In fact, I think we're in the middle of a stronger-than-necessary backlash against it. CC seems to be gunning in favor the bear-wrestling mountain man image over the hippie, and the mountain man eats lots of meat. I participated in a food panel last semester, which resulted in guys on the paleo diet coming up to me after it was over and haranguing me about my protein intake and accusing me of lying about the number of pull-ups I could do. Vegetarians like myself try not to bring up their diet choices too often, and I rarely tell people my reasons, unless they ask. It's like being a secret feminist who tries to avoid saying things that will annoy everyone, like "that rape joke you made was sexist."
Just sit outside of Rastall on any given Monday evening and you will be privy to enough entitled complaining to last you for a decade. (Even though Meatless Monday goes heavy on the eggs and cheese to appease the unfortunate diners who didn't notice the signs.) So . . . I'm finding it ridiculous that anyone would feel like they're taking refuge from the crazy veghead atmosphere because meat is EVERYWHERE on campus, except for one night a week in one dining facility.
I find that taking this kind of allied pride in being meat-eaters in college is as silly as, say, some Senators getting together to congratulate themselves on being white, rich, and male. How in the world do you take pride in being part of the dominant and unquestioning status quo? It even props up a sexist, heteronormative paradigm. It really drives it home once you see your friends called fags, vag-itarians, eunuchs, or other for their food choices. What does that say about how we view females and queers? Is there anything at all comparable that you can call a meat-eater? Call them murderer and they just smile and say "yep, and it was delicious!"
So yeah, it's making me angry that carnists on campus might view themselves as some kind of counterculture.
I have now realized that maybe my anger comes from the casual attitude that students, such as those who participate Carnivore Club, take towards food. I take my food seriously, at all times. I don't take breaks from my beliefs just to relax and hang. I don't write letters or go to protests; my activism IS my diet. So all of these student events that occur that have an abundance of meat, not just Carnivore Club events, they are a slap in the face to my way of life, which a way of mindful eating.
I disagree that tolerance breeds tolerance, because to truly tolerate me, they would have to accept that I am anti-meat. There, I said it. My way of life is a judgement on the carnist way of life. I judge the culture (really, the industry) of meat to be environmentally unethical, uneconomical, and sexist. It pits personal and social pleasure over the common good. It's not about the Carnivore Club as an organization, which is run by responsible people for various nice reasons. It's about WHY does it exist under this heading (instead of being an org. like, I dunno, Students for Strategic Fun and Feeding). And you know what? They tolerate vegetarians only insofar as they aren't annoying bitches. This gets really tricky, because when you look up vegetarian in the CC dictionary, you get
veg·e·tar·i·an:
1. quiet rabbit
2. annoying bitch
On a final note, I wish I could live off all of the free food seved at school functions, but I can't eat pizza, deli sandwiches, or burgers, so I'm out of luck. As for veggie burgers, they are the go-to consolation prize on any restaurant menu. It's like being served cheap lemon sorbet in a fancy gelato parlor. I'll be fine if I never see another veggie burger in my life.
CarnClub: Just wanted to shed some light on my perspective. That's all. I am a meat eater, a feminist and environmentalist. I don't see any of those as being mutually exclusive.
**********
Another poster on this facebook dialogue commented with this piece on why this issue cannot be one of mutual tolerance, also a good read.
**********
That's all for now, folks. Have thoughts on this debate or any of the Fave Five? Leave a comment!
No comments:
Post a Comment